When I came upon the opportunity to write a review for AboutOne I was pretty excited. I consider myself an overly organized person and any tool to help me stay organized gets me giddy. I am sure my readers are starting to wonder what AboutOne is, well AboutOne is a comprehensive online organizer to help manage your personal and private information utilizing a secure application. This application utilizes a patent-pending technology for online filing, calendar applications, and contact organization to help you to organize, store, and share your multi-media data (text, photos, videos, artwork) and household files (health, education, possessions).

AboutOne is designed for busy people in mind who are looking for a simple way to organize family life, into streams of information. Your data is stored and easily accessed for when and how they are needed, including health histories for doctor visits, babysitter/caregiver instructions, home inventories for insurance claims, education summaries and documents, plus on- and offline access to emergency information and contacts.

You can store countless types of information within your AboutOne account. The way I think about is, if it exists electronically it can be uploaded. From there on out the possibilities of types of data can be endless. For me I added documents that I need copies of not only often, but sometimes when I am not home (ie, lease, custody schedule, support order, vaccination documents, health records). I also uploaded many videos that I wanted kept in a place where if, god forbid, my laptop crashes, I could count on having a copy stored. Other documents that can be uploaded include manuals and warranties for household appliances and electronics, and receipts. We all know how easy it is to lose receipts, and when the only proof of my extended warranty on my Nook was in receipt form, yes, you know I had to snap a picture of it and upload to AboutOne. Now Murphy’s law can take that receipt.

There is so much I can say about AboutOne, but for those who need to see AboutOne in action, just watch the video below.

I will admit at first I was a bit overwhelmed to take on adding all of my documents and data into AboutOne. Just like Carley said in the in the video above, I thought it would take too much time to get all of my information uploaded. But it’s true, when you add your documents and data as you go along, before you know it you catch up.

The first documents I uploaded were ones that I seem to need at my fingertips frequently, these included my custody agreement, my support order, and my lease. With DD starting school, I had to add health data, vaccination schedule, and dental records to that list of frequently needed items. The funny thing is, even though I need copies of one of those important documents every so many weeks, it always seems that they are the same documents that I always seem to misplace! I even had to rummage around for about 10-15 minutes looking for my support order to scan and upload into AboutOne.

I really like how I can access my AboutOne account via an app on my phone. My phone is my lifeline and I literally use it for everything. Its my camera, my video camera, my address book, my calender, my email portal, and my only phone line. The AboutOne app makes it easy for me for me to access and access my files from anywhere. For example, many times my mom would ask if I had the kids for an upcoming holiday, and of course I could never remember if I did or not. My answer would always be “let me check when I get home and I’ll call you”. I get home, and forget. My mom would ask me again about the holiday schedule the next time I saw her, I’d do a facepalm, and lather rinse repeat. Not anymore! Now I not only can answer my mother right when she asks me, but I also don’t have to dig through my files each time I need to look at a copy. The AboutOne phone app has probably become my favorite feature.

I do want to mention that the calendar feature is not available yet, which was a huge bummer when I first signed up. I am excited to see that the calendar feature WILL sync with Google Calendar (talking about making a good thing more awesome). I place any and everything on my Google Calendar because my brain is mush and I forget appointments all the time (I usually have to set up at least 2-3 alarms to remind me of an appointment too). Right now the calendar app I use currently on my phone doesn’t always sync with my google calendar, which means I sometimes miss appointments. I am not sure when AboutOne’s calendar feature will be up and running, but I cannot wait to get rid of, and replace, the one I am currently using.

Now there were a few hiccups that I came across as I started to explore the capabilities of AboutOne. First, it took several attempts to get my contacts in google to import into AboutOne, which I found really frustrating. Eventually my contacts did import and accessing my contacts has been flawless ever since. Second, I noticed once in a while I’d upload a document/file only to find that it never saved even though I hit save. When these happened I just tried again later or even the next day.

There are a few things that I’d like to see AboutOne add to this software, including video upload capabilities from the phone app (right now you can only add videos via your PC). I’d also like to see if the home page could have folders for each set of document types, instead of just though the drop down menu. Better yet, even the ability to create your own categories for managing your documents and files. However, all in all I really enjoy using AboutOne. Its been very easy to use, and very helpful in tracking my documents. For a person who is borderline OCD when it comes to organization, I’ll even go as far as say that I had fun using my AboutOne account.

If any of my readers would like to give AboutOne a try, please sign up and try it for free for 30-days. After 30-days its only $5/month ($10/month for those who need more than 20 GB of data to store), which isn’t a bad price considering it does more than act like a virtual filing cabinet. I do want to ask my readers to please click on this AboutOne hyperlink when you sign-up.

For all you tech savy people, I have the QR code below for downloading the AboutOne app to your smartphone.

I was compensated by AboutOne to review their online organizer. All opinions and text are my own.

2 thoughts on “About One”

I know! About this time last year I would have balked at a service like this and just got an external hard drive to store everything. But these days I need files on the go, so AboutOne is perfect for me.